Meet Me At My Window
by PopShop
Summary: Roxas realizing they're turning into one of those poisonous relationships he sees on daytime T.V. Axel trying so hard to care.
1. Playing Cards, Instruments & People

I'm not sure if this is inspiration or experience. Don't own Kingdom Hearts or Jack's Mannequin.

* * *

_"I could use a hero right now_

_You could use someone to save_

_Someone like me_

_Someone who's not brave_

_Someone who's not free"_

He's smiling, bright sunshine shattering through his teeth and setting his nerves on end. He's grinding his shark tooth grin, maybe his molars will splinter like crushed light bulbs. Friction between his incisors exploding fireworks behind the privacy of his lips. Nothing can dim that smile, like a black hole, sucks the pink from his cheeks, the light from his eyes. Behind those pointed pearl barricades, the words are compressed and he can't speak for fear of the truth bleeding from his lips.

He says, '_It's not about what my mouth says_'.

The veins in his hands pump blue blood, thick wires of pastel hues beneath the surface of his skin. His heart hammering violently against the bleach bone fingers of his ribcage. The beat a little too fast, catching the breath in his throat.

Relax, relax, relax, and suddenly he's longing for the half-moon carvings of fingernails in his temples.

'_It's **never** about what my mouth says_'.

His secrets are written in fine body language along the lines of tension between them now. Eyes too wide to focus, skimming strangers' faces through crowds. Always looking for the next person to fall in love with. Always looking for an escape route. He throws that bright smile around like rice at a wedding, like some fucking celebration, not salvation.

Not the bleak rescue operation it represents.

Always trailing citrus stained fingertips along the cuffs of jackets, catching nylon and wool in his fingernails, always waiting for someone to snatch his hand, to steal him away, to hide him in something genuine, where Axel won't recognise him for the honest smile he wears. They brush his grasping hands away, press fingers over their lips and wage whisper wars about him. Spin fantastical tales in golden threads of his history.

Their backstreet psychology, two minutes of mental analytical bullshit disclosed to anyone standing within a two foot radius that happens to possess ears bigger than their brains. And no one notices how this boy's smile stretches, a billboard grin, teeth glinting in the sunlight like the edge of a blade.

Axel's the kind of guy who walks like the world owes him something, like each footstep is another grudge. He wears that expert frown, the clever curl of lips to cover, quickly erase the suggestion of easy laugh lines. Each morning presses his tinted powders beneath his eyes, off-red shades of insomnia. A bruise coloured hue emphasising the shallow dips of his cheeks, the stark white of his skin in contrast.

But it's bullshit.

Make-up to add to his theatrics.

He imagines these illnesses as masks, faux horrors advertising ever changing symptoms for fear of someone recognising the root of his problems. That underneath everything, tear through those many masks, pass the fucking parcel and rip all those pretty layers of patterned paper away, '_I love you, I hate you. Hug me hurt me_', he is so fucking _average_, and that's what's really killing him.

Roxas says, '_our illnesses define us_'. Roxas with his brilliant mind, always ticking over a little faster than his words can capture. Roxas, nurturing those little fairies behind his eyes, blinding him with their glitter, fooling him into his open honesty. Roxas who'd scrawl his little secrets in pencil across the doors of bathroom cubicles because once upon a time, he couldn't bare the idea of lying.

No one ever threatened him, never pressed his cheek against a wall of his darkest ambitions sketched out in lead lines for the world to see, because secretly, people just craved for a little of that fairy dust flickering along his eyelashes.

Everyone wants to tell the truth just once.

Axel read Roxas' misshaped letters and half-formed words like gospel, and suddenly he was another of those fucking sparkle-dust addicts.

Roxas, Roxas, Roxas.

But he can't recall when it became about _himself_. When he developed such a knack for self-absorption. Can't remember when he kidnapped Roxas from the little wonderland inside his mind and held him hostage in reality.

And for what?

Some psychological experiment, pushing this kid against invisible boundaries, gauging reactions and using them to better mould the faux face pulled tight over his hopeless normality. Somewhere along the line, he'd say he got addicted, Roxas would say he fell in love.

Roxas the reckless romantic. They'll carve that in his headstone.

In their first few days together, Roxas was in love, while Axel was observing. Erratic, impulsive, irrational love, it made him smile, made him compassionate and warm. But those flickering fairies hiding behind his eyes, they got jealous.

They first time they fucked, Roxas hit him. The kid had come back to the apartment half out of his mind, his breath a toxic mix of vodka and perfume, smelling every bit like the underage girl at the club. The one with those wide red eyes, her skirt hiked up around her thighs just willing herself to grow up under those flaring firework lights.

The girl who's about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

His lips are chapped, a flaking mess streaked bloody under the dim lighting. He says in that drifting faraway voice, like someone's suffocating him, catching his words in fairy jars, that maybe he was out watching traffic, maybe he was holding someone's hand.

He's saying, '_I don't remember_', he's saying, '_don't fucking touch me_', he's asking, '_why did you let me go out alone?_' and every word is slurred and twisted, and there's heavy undertones of accusations.

'_You're supposed to love me'_.

And Axel can't figure whether it's the ethanol choking this boy's bloodstream, or those wild fairies with their baby's breath voices shouting words of warning, filling his ears with their bullshit propaganda. He hears fingernails catching in zippers, Roxas' uneven breathing, his fingers fumbling with buttons and buckles. He sees the playing card flutter from the boy's sleeve, its glossy surface shimmering and reflecting, stealing his attention.

The king of hearts, how fucking ironic. Luxord and his golden sense of humour.

Roxas had stumbled upon the gamblers haunt earlier that evening, while the sun was still a stretch of blood red violence along the horizon. He was an insect to those neon lights, pressing fingertips against the flickering bulbs spelling words he can barely decipher, and suddenly Luxord is there, his newsprint hand wrapped tight around Roxas' wrist, hard skin and friction along the bone finally caching the young boy's attentions. Blue eyes like cut glass watching him closely and suddenly Roxas is blinking through the darkness of what lay beyond the neon, this dank little cave Luxord chooses to hide in.

And he's pissed, and dizzy, anxiety hopping off the walls of his stomach, like maybe he's in love, like maybe he's still looking.

'_How's Axel?_' Luxord's saying, his eyes skimming bottle labels lined like target practise just beyond the counters, his fingers pressing familiar against the playing cards in his palm. And those fairies, lingering just beyond Roxas' reach, are cackling and giggling, their sudden motion stirring their whirlwinds of glitter, and he's squeezing his eyes shut against invisible flickering shards, and suddenly Luxord's voice is pressing heavy on his ears again. '_Everything okay?_' (in there? Out here?)

He is an absolute gentleman, but an even better actor.

It sounds like concern. But only sounds like it.

He's wrapping up his indifference in magic, make believe, in flare and falseness. He allows people to interpret as they will. Luxord with his quick wit, even quicker hands, the cards in his palm a quick flash of red and black.

He says, '_there's no such thing as magic_,' and Roxas is nodding along, agreeing whole-heartedly, hazy-eyed and soft, but Luxord's words are soon lost in translation and he's hearing , '_there's no such thing as love_'. And he's ready to fight for it, piling the words up like ammunition behind a bitter grin. He's ready to fuck for it, but Luxord is pushing his hands away, patting his shoulder, his lips moving to form shapes of words composed entirely of vowels.

And Roxas can hear the wild laughter of those fairies in his mind, their razorblade lips stinging behind his eyes, but he's not crying. He reasons with them, forms his argument as best he can with a palpable stench of cheap vodka on his breath. He's saying there's no such thing as love. He's deliberating how much he _Can't. Fucking. Stand. Axel_.

He's wondering why he always goes back.

And Luxord's reading that vacant stare like the fucking funny pages, some self-important snigger escaping him as those swift hands quick-draw, the playing card already folded and lodged in the boy's cuff.

The King of Hearts.

The Suicide king.

Roxas, Roxas, Roxas.

The boy crash lands somewhere far beyond his comfort zone, he's got that dopey grin like he should say thanks, like he should wonder aloud what they achieved here other than ensuring more sleepless nights on the blonde's part. He's peeling himself from the barstool, and those neon lights shine more confusion on a face to young to belong to this bullshit. The night almost cradles him as he steps out towards it, his knees knocking, stupid smile still cemented solid. And Luxord's congratulating himself on a game well played, flexing fast fingers and ordering '_whatever that guy's having_'.

There's no such thing as magic, there's no such thing as love. They're words, a few letters slapped into a dictionary, words used to describe how life tricks those odd smiles onto our lips. And Luxord, with all his skills, a well-developed knowledge of his card games, all picked up from behind the bike sheds of some finishing school hidden away in the mountains, he knows when to fold. Knows when to throw his hands up in surrender.

Life is the biggest fucking player there is. And everyday it's tricking them to see something else, to feel something different. He says, '_Magic? Love? They're techniques. Life's distractions_'.

But Luxord also knows when he's playing a good game.

And while life herself may be a little beyond his skill level, Roxas, with a head twisted up full of fantasy, is easy pickings.

He plays, he tricks, that little wonder-child into returning to the wolves layer.

Axel's going to rip him to shreds.

And he's smiling into some piss-water beer, 'cause tonight he played just to prove he could fucking win.

And win he did.

And Axel's reading over that playing card again and again. Messy words scrawled over the face, the ink blotting and blurring on the glossy paper.

'_Sort your shit out with Axel, kid_'.

And that's all. Luxord's gospel. His commandment.

And Roxas will only read it backwards along the line of his wrist the following morning, the blotchy ink transfer. At least until Axel tacks it to the wall a few weeks from tonight, the words framed by the king's indifferent face, among all the post-it notes of '_I still don't love you_'. But for now, Axel's shoving it in the drawer of the bedside counter. And some part of him is trying to control his temper, biting back on misdirected anger, and he can't seem to figure out why this is wrong, why this feels off? His blatant creative streak is screaming inside his head, '_This is perfect. Pout more. Clench your fists. Show me some fucking rage_'.

The addict for dramatics.

And while he's baring teeth, studying Roxas with eyes that spit fountain fire like the surface of the sun, somewhere inside his head he hears, '_Just tilt your head, a little to the left. This light will never do, I can still see how happy you are_'.

One big fucking act.

Roxas' shirt is tangled around his wrists, smudging Luxord's written words of warning, streaks of pale blue ink mirroring the veins tangled just beneath his skin. And while skin is enough of a temptation in itself, the image is ruptured by those smudges of biro, a constant reminder of how Luxord believes this can be solved with words. Insistent advice that maybe he could just give it a shot. Axel sucks a deep breath through his teeth, figures there's nothing to lose.

Roxas is to far gone to even bother remembering this.

"Where were you?" he asks, not intruding, not prying or prodding, just passing conversation, and he's trying to look disinterested, shuffling through fast food menus stacked in the drawers, the playing card pressed among them, his fingers still tracing along the lines of the king of hearts. The same suicide king who's standing half naked and half insane across the room, with eyes the colour of storm clouds, reading carefully through responses in his cotton wool mind. And he can see disaster before it strikes, the kind of black-grey that looms on the horizon and promises devastation.

If Axel is ready to try his hand at negotiating, Roxas figures he could test out a lie or two.

"Just out," he whispers breathily, and he's standing still, but his heart is thumping like a fucking jackhammer along his temples.

He's drunk, and all he's got left is stupidity, but for some reason, it seems to fit him too well tonight.

He can feel it in the way his fingertips lose feeling; his mouth feeling like someone's kissed his lips to sleep.

Axel does well not to tense, not to glance up, not to use Roxas as his verbal target practise, fucking around with words sharper than knives.

"With Luxord?" _Play it cool, boy, Play it cool._

Roxas forgets how to breathe, and those fairies are choking on satisfaction, their hysterical cackling bubbling and blinding, and his mouth is hanging open and he figures maybe this lie thing is a little harder than Axel lets on.

The tendons of his throat pulled taut, thick like telephone cables, his electricity pulse dulled by the soft safety of the alcohol in his system. But it's in the way the light catches the sheen of sweat along his cheekbones, how wide eyes blink blue-black, pupils distorted, swallowed in shadow.

It's in the way he stands, he's confident because it's how Luxord _told_ him to be.

But beneath it, tearing down below how Roxas thinks he should be, he's still a genius; his mind is still worthy of gilded gold frames and galleries.

Axel never has to remind himself, in these moments, why he insists on Roxas' company. Average Axel who's destroyed himself physically just to feel those eyes on him, hush hush conversations of the rainbow-coloured boy, he's all metal and red, but still reads like a children's book.

He just wants to be fascinating.

Axel whose mom still sends his allowance by post, Axel whose dad still calls every second night wondering '_how's Red doin'?_' in that patronizing way that parents play into so well. The same Axel who could never push himself to hate his parents, to morally crucify them for the sake of something to tell a stranger.

He's got Roxas now, the perfect accessory to bad posture and black eyes.

Roxas is pressing bare-skin footprints along the floorboards, smile like a shooting star, picture-perfect and temporary. His hands still tangled behind his back in his cotton restraints, sharp shoulder blades throwing shadows like fucking angel wings along the walls. And it's not ironic, it's just fact.

Roxas Roxas Roxas, the suicidal king of hearts, and here he comes with loaded lips, skin lined with heroine.

"C'mon, Axel," and it sounds like, '_stop me_', sounds like '_save me_'. It's his attempt at negotiations and he's wrapping it up in that pretty smile, in the smell of skin and empty hands. And Axel can't remember where this tension is bleeding from, can't recall what they were fighting about, and Roxas' running his tongue along the line of his teeth as everything fades to spot lights and calls of '_quiet on set_'.

There's phantom fingers pressing spiral along his jaw, whispered words of '_tilt this way_', conflicting sounds of broad and slender, 'love' and 'hate'. His artistic side applauding, declaring Roxas' name in repetitive admiration, saying, '_this boy's gonna make you a star_'. And Axel's sneering, mentally skimming through his biography, knowing the only words worthwhile are the ones describing how Roxas ruined him. And from the back of his mind, beyond the barriers of his private movie set, he hears Demyx, choking on his language and punctuating each syllable with a fit of giggles, '_Everyone knows you gotta suffer for your art. You gotta be completely broken to be completely open, y'know?_'

Demyx who believes creativity is inspired by the more extremes of human nature. Love, loss. He says it only takes one to write your name in flash bulbs.

Suddenly the movie playing in his mind flickers to black and white, scratches and cigarette burns. Demyx' kitchen, all monochrome and white, modern and beyond him, the blonde is sitting centre screen, flannel and patch jeans, framed by marble countertops and espresso cups. Blinking flaxen strands into wide eyes, the sweep of dark eyelashes a welcome distraction from how tightly pressed his lips are.

The sound of silence is almost fucking deafening and Axel's never felt so victimised.

Demyx' breathing sounding like police sirens and gunshot wounds. All this waiting and watching sounds like warning, And Demyx is throwing his hands in the air, sighing into slouching, words bleeding into his heavy breathing, '_How long have you been with this guy?_', he's hearing, '_I thought you were 'in love'_'.

His fingers trail over strings and camel bone, unpractised, clumsy movements. He says it's all about falling in love, falling out of love. A pencil in one hand poised above manuscripts, the pressure he's applying paling his knuckles to match the décor.

Untrained, impractical Demyx, he's got his hands all over someone else's artwork. Sheet music and sitar strings, and he can't read a single note, plays even less. He's got a voice that sounds like how petrol smells, overpowering and addictive, spend too long absorbing it and it's dizzying, nauseating, because he's scratching on nerves.

It's about what he's not singing, all those minor notes he expertly skips over, all those words he neglects to say.

He's singing about plastic toys and late night train stations because he won't expose himself to the heartbreak that comes with both love and loss. Says there's no point, considering Axel indulges so willingly. So frequently. Says he's waiting for Axel to do something fucking amazing, something fucking stupid, something to inspire him to play an instrument he has no idea how to use.

Suddenly Axel's ringing him at four in the morning, sounding like insomnia and late-night television, saying that maybe he's in love. But only maybe.

But Demyx' fingertips still sound strange and awkward along the strings, and Axel's wondering if falling in love isn't enough to inspire Demyx, or maybe he was just lying when he made the phone call.

Demyx has those blue green eyes set on Axel, expecting, depending, and he's saying, '_Go home. Figure this out. Gimme something I can work with_'. Axel's head is spinning problems from the past, and his eyes so blind with cobwebs; he doesn't register the defeat, the exhaustion on the blonde's face.

Demyx who's fallen in love with music, Demyx who loses a little dignity each and every time he runs fingers along the strings of his instrument, each time he runs his eyes along the lines of music, the lines of space he can't understand. Demyx who knows love and loss all to well, who doesn't understand how perfect he is for all of this, except, he does. He's insistent on reducing Axel to this, exposing him to hopelessness and cataloguing the red head attempts in some vocal rendition he'll sing when he's half to hell, alcohol roaring in his ears, his voice the only sound, instruments laying useless about him, silent in their mocking.

Demyx who says, '_It's not about playing the instruments. It's about playing the people_'.

Now Roxas holds him hostage, mouth on his throat and his lips feel like he's been kissing broken glass, the skin splitting, cracked and bleeding, faint red lines like prison bars across his honesty.

He's tracing teeth along Axel's pulse, it feels - it sounds like war against his tongue, cannon fire and battle-cries. Each kiss a strike through another treaty they've set between them and Roxas' butterfly mouth is a threat to the peace.

Axel's thinking tonight they fix this, hide and seek, tall tales to be spun, eggshells to be staggered across. Lips like needles still prickling the skin of his collar. Vicious hands, calloused and cut, singed fingerprints pressing promise along Roxas' arms.

Axel's shoving him away before realising he wants him closer.

"What is fucking wrong with you?" Roxas' yelling, sounds like a fire drill, irritating, pointless, and Axel is thinking these fucking walls will burn around him eventually. Roxas can sing his fucking warnings to the stars.

He's talking with his hands, there's drunken prayer on his lips. Bare skin stomping along carpet floors, Roxas losing his temper, Roxas losing his mind. And Axel almost smiles, knows he should say something romantic, poetic, hopelessly teenage and maybe trivialise their situations. Spin stupid verses of Roxas and his petulance, his feet mutilated by the thin ice he contents himself to stumble across. Roxas kicking up a fucking riot because he's lonely, because maybe he wants to be lonely. Bullshit fantasy words of Roxas breaking his heart, tearing him to shreds from the inside out.

He feels the weight of a blue eyed haze bearing down on his patience. This has nothing to do with hearts. He's thinking that love is just another word for fear, a word to describe being overshadowed by something so fucking amazing, it's almost terrifying.

Roxas has train crash potential.

He's a self contained nuclear blast, blue-green fog and horror on his face and Axel can't take his fucking eyes off the sight. Roxas with his ethanol veins, eyes bruised mauve from late nights and explosive fights. He's already got the word on his lips, and Axel feels the threat again, knows the blonde only uses these words 'cause he finds them in the bottom of vodka shots and petrol.

"Do you love me?" and there's a window, a lapse in sense, in defence, in arrogance and insolence and it's just Roxas, standing barefoot among the ruins of their possessions, fists falling limp at his sides. The tension slipping from his face, and Axel can't place the expression, only sees it in its extremities. It is 'absolute' it is 'intense', a combination of utter loss, of utter realization. Hope and promise and all the other bullshit fairytales Roxas used to believe in.

Axel can hear him breath over the faint din of city traffic, and discovers how much he hates the sound.

Misty eyes shine neon, wide and waiting. Wondering. And Axel is having a hard time chasing the boy's moods, he's pressing the playing card between his index and thumb, tracing and retracing Luxord's words with a critical eye and figuring this is hardly a conclusion to their almost psychotic mental abuse.

Roxas with his beautiful bones and his big blue eyes, his skin a fucking inferno between hands too eager to care.

Roxas can feel the dignity drain from his lips in those heavy breaths. He's not sure, everything's 'maybe'. Everything's positive and negative all at once, and he's only a little dizzy, but he's standing his ground. He wants both, he wants everything because he can commit to nothing. He wants Axel's admittance, he wants Axel's avoidance. He's counting the notches along the red-head's spine. Those fairies in their sing-song voices say, '_Bite your tongue, this feels consequential._'

"Well, Do you?'' he can't help but cringe at the desperation bleeding through his own curiosity. His voice cracking and shaking and Axel's maintaining his silence like he's crossed enemy lines.

There is no before and after, there's just now, and his head feels almost explosive with the weight of the thoughts inside.

The red-head doesn't move, the automatic expansion-contraction of his chest almost hypnotic.

Roxas can't remember when or how they got this far. Remembers vaguely an obsession with love, but this doesn't feel like flying, doesn't feel like falling. This almost feels claustrophobic, and he's ready to say, '_I think we should see other people_', ready to plead, '_marry me?_' in his dazed misinterpretation of the words.

Axel's offering insight without encouragement.

"I thought I found something about you, y'know? Something amazing, a real kick in the teeth …" and he surrenders so easily because neither of them can describe this situation. His words trail off leaving a bitter aftertaste along amber stained lips, heavy implications of rejection and resentment, and Roxas feels sobriety creep along his nerve endings, unprotected, paranoid and nauseous. Kissing bottle lips was his practised excuse for irrationality, but the buzz dwindles and it leaves him shaking and exposed.

"And did you? … Find something?" Roxas promises himself he'll kiss the stars on this one. Wide eyes set on a happy ending, overlooking naked skin and rough hands, and the horrible people they are beneath mask beneath mask beneath mask. He's overeager and naïve and his heart's saying, '_he loves me_', his mind warning, '_he loves me not_'. Internally berating himself for this fucking masterful display of stupidity and immaturity and an absolute dependence.

Everything's disjointed, the silence screaming, blood pumping echoing through his misty mind. Axel is still bent awkward over the cabinets, Roxas counts fifteen.

Fifteen times he opens his mouth to speak, fifteen times before he finally manages his half-baked answer.

Axel just buying time until he falls in love.

And he's so fucking _sick_ of that word, it even hurts to think it.

"I'm still looking". Three little words, and they don't sound like 'I love you', but they're honest, and open and everything soft and gentle that sounds utterly vicious through Axel's lips. They sound like a beacon, the sound screeching over the faint flutter of stardust behind his eyes, that Axel is willing to give this another fucking run. Still content to search through the layers and layers of absolute distraction Roxas has built around himself, tear them apart with nicotine fingers, thick veins in his hands pumping diesel beneath the skin.

They're both on the line here, Roxas' belief balancing on a fine line between bullshit and brilliance, and Axel isn't as cold and calculating and absolutely riveted by Roxas' quirks as he should be, as is familiar.

Green eyes just watch him now, beyond noting habits, how he phrases his thoughts like drabbles slapped beside masterpieces, how he's absolutely destructive in his unquestionable devotion to being alive. And he can't phrase it as taking in '_how Roxas is_' or '_who he is_' because all those little behavioral flaws are integrated with everything Roxas.

But he never thought to just look at the boy. He's a little stunted, a hair colour vaguely reminiscent of Cheerio's or something, and he knows it's retarded, but hey, at least he's waking up to Roxas, even when he's not waking up to Roxas. And he's got these stupid wide eyes, makes him look like the scenes he sees are composed entirely of train wrecks and ghosts, lips always parted in that immature wonder where the words are always just beyond reach, but he's insistent on waiting for them regardless.

Axel's thinking, '_yeah yeah yeah, maybe I can try this_' but Roxas' already looming in the doorway to the ensuite bathroom, with his hand splayed support across his stomach, the other blindly reaching for his toothbrush, brushing away the aftertaste of cheap vodka and Luxord's breath until the blood oozes out from between his teeth, streaking the stark white of the sink.

All this blood and porcelain, red and white, it's just a reminder that Axel still looms over his shoulder, watching and waiting, his fingernails splintering the wood of the bedside table.

Roxas is smiling all sharp angles, foam lining his lips tinted pink, looks crazy and carnivorous, like he's found some imagination, initiative, finally seeking out all the attention and the affection he wants (deserves?) in the form of the hearts he'll tear through skin to claim.

Roxas sees Axel as some teenage fucking idiot who's about to grow up and is just about ready to give this 'love' thing a whirl.

Axel sees in Roxas the same jaded punk he'd paint illness across in the mirror every morning. Roxas who's bitter and angry and he's only here 'cause he hasn't figured out why he should leave.

And for good measure, Roxas still foaming rapid at the mouth, spraying candy coloured droplets to the carpet with each heaving sigh, says, "Don't fucking touch me, or I **_will_** kick you in the teeth."


	2. Sunshine Boy Burned Out

I'm sorry, i started drinking, and i forgot to stop. Don't own Kingdom Hearts or Emily Haines.

* * *

_'Cursed with a love that you can't express, _

_It's not for a fuck or a kiss._

_Rather give the world away than wake up lonely.'_

* * *

Its 3 a.m. and it's still fucking dark and just maybe, it's his fault.

His cage of four walls, this nightshade ambience is entirely self-made. Moods blurring and fading into a far more sinister shade of dependency, dirty glares and filthy fingers, he's got pollution burned along the ghost white of his skin. Axel's fingertip vocabulary of '_maybe, maybe, maybe_' traced along his thighs, his lips.

This is fucking ridiculous, he's pressing fingers, fists into his eyes, muttered mantra of '_cry, don't cry_'. 

_Just go to sleep, you're embarrassing yourself._

The shadows are speechless, but only when they pretend not to hear him. Axel is still breathing by his shoulder, soft as a siren under pretense of having drifted hours ago. He's masking it all, smells like weed and sweat. All elbows and angles and, '_Don't do this tonight, Roxas. I'm tired_'. And through the sounds of a world collapsing, Roxas picks out the delicate scratch of eyelids, lashes, Axel reading the warnings lining the ceiling, because he's faking.

Axel hasn't slept in days, hasn't touched Roxas in longer.

In his head, he hears echoes of Axel's school-boy words from weeks ago, '_Smile Roxas. Just smile_'.

Sometimes Axel would drink, his breath some complicated weave of whiskeys and wine, smelling like a fucking chemical fire, looking like a fucking prince. Side-effects of faux bravery and eager fingers dialing their apartment before common sense hits him like a fucking runaway train. Sometimes he calls to try an '_I love you_' and when he's feeling less brave, less stupid, less like a player, more like a pope he says, '_I know you. I think you're important_'. And it's enough to placate the mind, the confidence, of some fire-fury teenage boy who's cataloging all of this, ready to spin it on its end.

Roxas who says, '_there's no such thing as 'friendly fire'. Not really._'

Lying in the darkness, sharing something as intimate as oxygen with the love of a past life, he watches the fading whisper-waves of ghosts throw phantom emotions ricocheting off the walls. He's blinking around their mute-verbal shrapnel. And they do not speak, nor feel, but they imprint him, leave heavy holes of remembrance in his head, his heart.

These ghosts restructure their latest vocal arena; they are the phantoms of affections that dwindled there, imaginary lips move in mimicry of allegations spat, shot and sung through air still thick with tension. And through their silver-shadow features, he thinks maybe he sees himself. Maybe he sees Axel. Axel with his vicious reds, his dark moods and Roxas squeezes his wonder-world eyes shut tight, saying, '_He was wrong. He's always wrong_', thinks, '_He's needs to burn the fuck out. I can't touch him when he's blazing like this_'.

Roxas thinks they've been tearing through the fairylands of a midnight mountain for too long, thinks maybe it's time to see the sun again.

'_Smile Roxas. Just smile._'

It means so much, he deciphers so little, desperate for distractions, seeking the sounds to drown Axel's cigarette-stained wheezing. So he's collecting the songs of car crashes, of fist-kissing and teeth tinkling along tarmac.

The world outside his window is painted the colour of a childhood nightmares, shadows like fingers and he swears this night will steal him from beneath his sheets.

Streaks of light bleed across the carpets, the colour of cocktails and nail polish, neon streaks through the aftermath of their private conflict, and suddenly he's overwhelmed, realising just how small he is, how big Axel talks him up to be. He's trailing sticky fingerprints along the thin thread of some cigarette-burned blanket. He's searching, rolling silent swears from his tongue, his palms sweaty and his breathing hitching and catching and suffocating him and suddenly Axel catches his hand, cool fingers curling around his own, soothing away the shakes. Absolutely silent.

* * *

'_I really don't love you_'.

That's how it all starts, the words that bid Axel's world permission to crumble around his ankles.

Roxas is sticking love notes (but not really) to the ceiling again. Blunt and honest and definite, and he's shaking his head thinking, '_Totally open to interpretation_,' because Roxas is poetic and brilliant, and Axel's convincing himself the kid's just playing hard to get.

It's past midnight, the flickering red letters on the bedside counter tell him they're running out of time, but he can't reach across the distance between them. Feels Roxas trace those nervous fingertips along the surface of some threadbare blanket, seeking out his skin for comfort. Tonight his knuckles warp to sharp edges and harsh corners and Roxas will find no relief within his palms.

He's got '_we're not working_', he's got '_we should talk_', all kinds of ammunition lining his lips, but Roxas with his fucking weapon mouth, a teenage-boy smile framing the sounds of a mid-life crisis, will shoot him fucking down before they can salvage any of this.

Street-lights shine pink-blue shadows on his face, he's staring into nothing, he hasn't slept in days.

"_We should probably-_" his own voice drifting into silence, because he really isn't sure how to verbalize anything.

They need to talk, to separate, to hold on.

Night after night they lie on some coffee-stained mattress, Roxas measuring the distance between them, precise and so dedicated in his attempts at isolation. He says, '_Don't touch me, not tonight_' and it's some ribbon-wrapped attempt at sympathy, like maybe they could revive this, like maybe things will change tomorrow, or the day after that, and Axel finds he's living his days through white noise and a fog of concerned voices bleeding through the Roxas, Roxas, Roxas.

He's waiting for permission to get on with his life.

* * *

Axel can't remember how he got here.

He's got a head full of bad ideas, an obsession with fixing every habit he breaks, the rainfall ash of a forgotten cigarette burning the skin between his fingers.

In his mind's eye he's still seeing Roxas. Fangs and claws and those wild eyes, over-exaggerated hand-gestures and the ruins of their apartment spread like evidence around his bare feet. The soft pink shades of his mouth blending to alarming shades of gore, every little truth he's spitting, sharp diamond honesty.

Roxas losing his patience, losing his mind, hunched and rabid like some vicious animal, razor teeth proving less effective than the little secrets they conceal, he's saying '_My god, Axel, every day I'm falling further and further out of love with you_'.

Zexion has been storing his words behind silence since Axel's arrival, his attentions spinning, unfocused, reading and re-reading the blurry lines of text, his tiny glass hands curled defensively around the yellowed pages of second-hand Shakespeare. His hair the colour of oil-slicks bleeding across his face, obscuring his eyes, and Axel thinks maybe he can feel him watching. Waiting.

Zexion boasting an eternal supply of patience, a very limited reserve of sympathy.

Axel remembers him from when they were kids, all wild eyes and tight fists, fighting the world with snapping teeth, back when '_dying_' was a hobby only the old frequently partook in. Dirt smudged across his cheeks, he'd run barefoot through the wood, singing words and stories beyond his years, his lungs aching with the effort. Zexion would sit on the porch, refuse their invitations and shake his head with that sad-mock smile, tiny glass doll-hands waving them away, whispering, '_My mom says I shouldn't_'.

Because Zexion was never _just_ 'a kid'.

Axel's flicking through freeze frames of their high school years, scenes cigarette-burned and scratched. Zexion with his hair swept across his face, the pockmarked skin along his cheeks some war hero's badge, a testament to the youth he never particularly experienced. Always one step away from a bed-sheet noose in his mother's armoire.

He knew too much of the world to bother with some petty attempt at survival.

'_It's Roxas_,' Axel's saying, like it's not already blisteringly obvious. Like he has anything left to discuss, like there's anything else worth discussing.

And that boy is creeping under the layers of his skin and wrapping everything in that sunshine veil, cannibalistic and chewing through nerve endings cause, '_Fuck Axel, It's like you don't want to be happy_'. He's thinking of slick-red teeth, eyes that bleed diamonds of daylight, streaks of blonde across his vision, strips of gold and blue.

Such a masterpiece painting of what his mom would say angels looked like.

Zexion's blinking blind, eyes laced with prescription meds for sleeping and dealing and living.

Fingers that remind Axel of spiders' legs and silver-thread cobwebs skim across pages of blurry font, of angry neon highlights and chicken-scratch pencil notes he reads at 4 a.m. when he's half wild, when he can still taste chemicals of encouragement lining his teeth.

Watching Axel trace the lines along the skin of his palms, he's breathing these tiny half-breaths, ready to say, '_the kid's a psychologist's fucking wet dream. What do you expect?_'

But Axel's eyes looks a little wider, like maybe he's ready to see more than then half-truths Roxas presses against the shell of his ear when the sunshine dies outside their window.

'_Do you think Romeo and Juliet were real?_' And it sounds like a weak ankle, a bad back, a lapse of defence and Axel's going to tear right in nails and teeth and all this misplaced aggression.

Axel's thinking, '_I believe I'm stuck in a fucking remake_' but he's smiling this broken bottle smile saying, '_It's just fiction_', swallowing back, '_You should get out more_'.

Zexion trapped in his paper-back world of yellow-pages and two-dimensional characters. He's sweeping loose strands from his face, fine threads the colour of burned-out buildings and winter, thin porcelain fingers pressed against the clammy skin of his temple, his drug-induced silver shimmer glistening along his skin. Throbbing fingers flickering along the words of cursed love, he's tracing their letters, eyes still fixed on Axel.

He knows their words, loves them like something worthwhile.

'_Exactly_,' he says in his suffocating voice, heavy with a lethargy the thin red veins spell along the whites of his eyes, '_Just fiction_'. Because he won't describe the picture Axel and Roxas have painted between them.

Modern-day society's answer to Romeo and Juliet, their story composed of alcohol and addictions far stronger than any drug Roxas' doctor may prescribe. Their affairs constantly bleeding through their paper thin walls. It's just a matter of time before they destroy each other, and what they lack in drive, they compensate for in desire, and theirs is a story that cannot possibly lead to a happy ending.

Glancing at the blurry figures of his watch, he's only vaguely registering the lack of stars in the sky tonight, fingertips skimming the debris of his desk, seeking out the rest of his peaceful night in pill-form, nodding towards the doorway, towards Axel, saying, '_It's not too late to fix this_,' sounding like, '_It's not too late to leave him_'.

For a few brief seconds, the blue-blonde ribbons fall from Axel's eyes, releasing him from his own teenage bullshit to notice he is not the only one to suffer beneath the weight of their years.

He sees his old friend transformed. A _new_ person, a _new_ friend.

Zexion with the white dust of some new experimental drug speckled along the cracked skin of his lips. The little bright boy doomed to watch on from the far side of everything. Isolated for his own protection, like paper chains, a glass sculpture and this world would tear him apart; smash him to useless little shards.

Instead, now, he drifts, wrapped constantly in his cotton-wool world of sedatives and sleeping pills. Pages and pages of the words and the wonders living beyond his windowpane, worlds he no longer has the energy to freefall into. And the people from these sheets have become passable company, Romeo and Juliet gradually replaced by Axel and Roxas and their '_I love you', 'Shut the fuck up and let me love you more_'.

Axel thinks maybe Zexion is safer with his written word and silence, because people are cruel and fucking stupid and Zexion's beyond all that. He was always the kinda kid to do something irrational and intimate, and he'd tie all those pretty knots with his drug-shaken hands.

Reality would just kick the stool out from beneath him.

Zexion thinks maybe Axel's here to save him.

Axel's heaving himself off the floor, a symphony of popping joints and exaggerated yawns, fast word apologies of, '_I should probably get goin'. Roxas'll be wonderin' where I am._'

One look at Zexion propped in his pillow palace, duvets heaped across his knees, bookend battlements, he looks tiny. He looks ill and Axel's thinking maybe he should hug him, shake his hand? Steal him? But he's forcing small smiles around, '_Thanks, dude_'.

Thanks for your lack of advice, your admirable lack of interest.

'_Thanks for listening_'.

Zexion's already burying himself under the wonderland of another book, a small flick of his chalk white hand offering his goodbye, and his lips are moving, but Axel's feet move faster. Words of advice falling wasted to the floorboards.

'_If fiction couldn't get it right, Axel, what makes you think you can?_'

* * *

When Axel gets back to the apartment, Roxas has repaired those beautiful bad habits of his, decided to once more confide his deepest secrets in thin plasterboard and mould-encrusted wallpaper. A post-it note arrangement of words that Axel thinks should maybe hurt a little deeper, but this all feels like petty revenge, a school-boy prank, Roxas standing by his masterpiece with that brilliant flash-bulb smile, saying, '_Just in case you forget_'.

Cold coffee cup in one hand, the remains of his sticky-note pad clenched in a white-knuckled fist, he's stepping around Axel, too close, breathing heavily and smiling like the one who got away.

And he may hate him during the day, but he misses him when the night falls.

'_I don't love you_'.

The phone's ringing, echoing around a head void of thought, and he hears Roxas slip into some style of humanity acceptable beyond their privacy. The high-pitched greeting, false smiles and terrible acting.

Roxas who cannot tell a lie. Stroking the counter-tops with magic marker stained fingertips, smiling something too cynical and jaded to fit his too-young face, saying, '_Axel, it's your mom_'. An offered lifeline, and Roxas is just bitter enough to collect their snippets of conversation through the extension line in the kitchen, scribble their words like gospel across his neon-coloured notepad, litter them about the floorboards as evidence of the storms that rage behind their closed doors.

Roxas who can't remember what he wants.

Lonely Roxas who maybe sold his sanity for the friends that fight to escape him.

Receiver pressed against his ear, eyes following Roxas through dim-doorways and dismal mood-swings, he hears, '_How've you been, baby?_' and his mouth's moving but he knows he's telling lies, _'Oh yeah, fine, fine_,' Roxas sitting down the hallway with some contorting smug grin smothering any trace of innocence left across his features.

She's reading through rehearsed lines hundreds of miles away, the same scripted questions she asked last week, the same bullshit stories she fabricates about brothers and sisters, glorifying their home life and attempting to lure her little boy home. Away from '_him_' at least.

'_Still with Roxas?_' and it's only light inquiry, tinted a little exhausted, a subtle shade of hopeful, and Axel can't hear her thoughts over the sound of Roxas slamming the receiver into it's cradle in response. He can hear the heavy golden-breath-panting from his perch among the wreckage of their bedroom.

Bare feet still sound like thunder kicking up a fucking storm in the kitchen, his poorly disguised tantrum, the sound of cutlery and plastic, running water all blending over any hints of distress in his mumbling.

He's saying, '_I gotta go, Something's up with Roxas_,' and he knows Roxas would cradle him in his child-like hands if he thought maybe he could hold fire behind the cage of his fingers. Axel only slightly panicked - _This has never happened before?!_ - fumbling with the phone, missing his mother's parting shot of, '_there's always something up with Roxas'_.

And there he is, that beautiful sunshine boy, his hand-made battlefield, standing among the ruins, wearing water-weak smiles like the height of fashion.

Plastic containers and rotten food spread about his feet and he's torn through the cupboards, the drawers, the fridge, still hoping to capture Axel's wandering attentions.

'_Your mom still doesn't like me_,' he's whispering, his voice hoarse, colour draining from his face, a white-blonde mess, clammy-skinned and dark-eyed and Axel thinks this is what Roxas should always be, weak and young, these are the long-lost threads of innocence reappearing beneath the dirt of city-layers and a teenager's tendency to over-exaggerate.

Roxas who changes moods more often than meds, Roxas who's here and there and nowhere, suffocating and secluded all at once.

'_You worried she'll try make me leave you?_'

Roxas glaring up beneath his bangs, fists curled tight by his sides, the audible slide-crack of bone beneath the pale paper layers. Maybe feeling a little spiteful, a little stupid, maybe, and Axel's got this self-confident smile that doesn't fit the dimensions of his face, 'cause he knows how terrified Roxas is of being left alone.

And Roxas knows they can't fix this without the sacrifices, smiles that familiar half-smirk, says, '_But what If I left you?_' (not for real, just imagine) and Axel's kissing the skin along his jaw saying, '_that won't happen, we both know that_'.

Roxas sighing into something reassuring, smiling at maybe a double bluff? With Axel's scorching the skin of his throat, it's hard to say who's playing who. Roxas the sore loser, with his unfailing obsession with honesty.

And maybe his question was more of a confession.

Just maybe.


	3. I think I Do I Probably Don't

_They told me that boys were good liars, but this boy, he was the best. I think he stole something important from me. I think he can keep it._

* * *

It's Monday morning and the nuclear dust is still settling, everything a violent shade of red, echoes of arguments and declarations, and he cannot speak through the heavy stress laced between his jaws.

Hayner's talking, he's always fucking talking, and Roxas is blearily nodding along, wide-eyed chic and the final traces of dusted black bruises along the bridge of his nose. And Roxas is so devastatingly in love, feeling fatal; he's dragging his eyes along Hayner's profile, the shape of his throat, collar bones and long eyelashes, and wondering whether he could fall in love with this boy.

Of course he fucking could, that boy's beautiful all wrapped up in mortality and gestures too human to overlook. Visible notches in his knuckles, long fingers that grasp and tap and flex, and maybe it's for the better because Roxas is just waiting for an end to repetitive motion, elaborate beats of fingertip pads on paper and plastic, to snatch those fingers and squeeze for grinding cartilage. Fingers that look nothing like Axel's demon hands, delicate, long fingers, ten sharp points, dangerous weapons for tearing through ribs and peeling the layers and layers of cardiac muscle away to find something worthwhile among the ruins.

He's saying something about the city, blinking these wide starlight eyes too quick for Roxas' tiny heart to compete with, words that curl his tongue around his teeth, and suddenly Roxas has itchy palms, turning sky eyes towards the front of the lecture hall, busy mind ticking with calculation, mapping the tendon trails along the back of Hayner's hands, dark lashes and liquid-fire eyes. The sudden heavy weight of calloused palms on his skin, he's hearing, '_Dude, where've you been?_'

Roxas is loaded, and petty, lips lined with accusations and false blame, saying, '_We fought again last night_', before any of the millions of sparks flickering brilliant white electricity in his brain tell him that this is so stupid - this is almost recruitment, a pity party of one, and boy, he'd snatch all he could with those grabby, needy fingers of his - Hayner's rolling his eyes and creasing his lips together, folding behind them all the secrets about how much he _doesn't_ care, the tilt of his head, and angle of his jaw, weighing consideration against boredom.

He's opening his mouth, the awkward inhalation that looks like two punctured lungs and sounds like a death rattle. He's fully intending to groan out Roxas' name in that over-exaggerated, exhausted gesture of almost weary parenting, with that ugly grimace twisting up what could be pretty under neon lights and a fog of ethanol and pills. These expressions and gestures Roxas thinks he could paint if he could only invent the colour of the bright white light Hayner's got glowing in his eyes.

It's all distractions, isn't it?

Nothing genuine comes from anger, or revenge, and Roxas is almost smiling trying to recall whether he's still capable of '_genuine_'.

Hayner with his butterfly lashes, the shadows dipping the contours of this throat, the delicate blue veins spinning pretty spirals beneath the layers of dirt and sunburn. This boy's just something to keep his dirty mind busy, his dirty hands busy, and throughout all of this, he won't remember Axel's name.

Well, he'll _try_ not to.

Glossing over last night's cold war waged across their battlefield bedspread. Roxas thinking how much he loves to feel wanted, how much he hates to want. Axel lying to wrap him up in layers and layers of insulation, cotton wool protection, saying, '_I love you, I love you. I'm in love with you_', over and over and not meaning a word of it.

He's snatching at Roxas' tiny glass hands, shaking and paralyzed all at once, knuckles locked in some internal display of defiance and aggression, wrapping his elongated demon fingers around his wrists like shackles made of skin and bone and possession and obsession, things far stronger than any precious metals. And Axel is talking again, spitting fire, a sharper edge to his toxic green gaze, tighter grips and looser lips, '_Just leave it. Leave them behind_'.

Them.

Your friends.

Your friend.

_Hayner._

And his forked tongue could weave all those wondrous lies, but Hayner's name is written all over his face in jealousy coloured ink.

_Just stay with me in my fairytale fortress forever._

And then Roxas sees red, just sheets of it, crimson colours crying into his vision, feeling his mouth moving a mile a minute saying everything and nothing, flecks of spit on his lips, dry eyes, because Axel's not worth anything personal.

And then silence.

Not comfortable, far beyond discomfort, just this deathly, smothering silence, the kind Roxas thinks sounds like the death and birth of the universe. The chilling nothingness after the nuclear attacks. Mother Nature's sigh of relief.

Just nothing.

Five minutes later sees Roxas sprawled across their piss-stained mattress screaming into pillows that smell of cigarette smoke and acetone, the fabric choking him, the smell of Axel smothering him until he's dry-retching and raging.

Axel takes the floor in the kitchen, flat against the scarred linoleum, staring through the blinds of their third story window and counting the stars left dotted like glitter across the skyline - the ones Roxas has yet to steal and swallow – watching it all through an eerie haze of cigarette smoke and inexplicably watery eyes.

The next morning stumbling down the hall, a mouth stuffed full of apologies and stupidity. He should not have told that brilliant young boy he had fallen in love with him.

He should not be telling that same brilliant young boy that he's now changed his mind.

But Roxas is gone, evidence in those neon sticky notes spread across the bed sheets in an imitation of the tears Roxas does not seem to think '_they_' deserve. Crumpled up scraps of attempted thoughts, and Roxas is failing at all the reasons Axel was obsessed with him. All that honesty stripped away, peeled away like something gory and painful, a slow motion horror sequence of blood and flesh. But there is one note posing an almost magnetic attraction, a nauseating green colour palmed to his own pillow, and maybe it's just coincidence, or maybe it matches his eyes.

'_Gone to class. I still fucking hate you_'.

And while Roxas presses heavy stares along the curves of Hayner's throat, Axel's facedown on the floorboards, thinking.

Psychological suicide.

He's placing faces to words, because maybe he's a little fucked up, maybe he needs something pretty to get him through this. In his little spider-web of poetry, he imagines '_honesty_' and he's saying aloud to the dust clouds and woodlice, '_It's gender-specific, yeah?_' because girls are honest.

Aren't they?

Soft eyes and soft angles. He imagines something pure and pretty, blonde hair and blue eyes.

But not Roxas.

He can't trust Roxas, he says as much, sees as much in the uneasy tension between him and Hayner.

He wants to fuck and fight and feel, and everything's flooding him, and he can't just shut his eyes against this. Still trying to figure out what love is, a figure of speech, a bad joke, an inexplicable magic trick, a one hit wonder or a mechanism for good story-telling?

He still can't figure out whether he meant it when he choked the words out.

Because Roxas '_wants_' for the sake of wanting, not for the sake of having. Wants to hear a genuine, '_I love you_'. Doesn't want to return the favour.

_'And my, my, how I've broken him. I'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry. Just go back to who you were before me'.  
_


End file.
